Glimpse
by Ikilledthepaperclip
Summary: He first sees the girl in spring—or what might be called an approximation of spring on Arwald 27-G.


AN: I suppose this is AU now, but I've been nursing it in MS Word for the better part of a year, and figured now's as good a time as any to let it go. Thanks much for reading; hope you enjoy :)

* * *

He first sees the girl in spring—or what might be called an approximation of spring on Arwald 27-G. He's unsure who catches whose attention first, but then she's bouncing toward him, all gaiety and youth, and staring up into his face. She's about as short as his companion; he feels himself towering over her like a well-stitched scarecrow as she smiles.

"Hullo!"

A feeling seeps into his puzzled brain: _déjà vu_. He decides it's a good term, a surprisingly good term from the (mostly) pudding-brained humans. He blinks once, twice before responding.

"Uh. Hello."

There's an attempt to present his usual disinterested self, but she draws out of him unaccounted-for warmth, tenderness he hadn't known he possessed for any other than the tiny schoolteacher who was his partner and friend. He takes a moment to appreciate the eyes of the girl before him—wide, impossibly wide, and yes, there's the connection, he thinks. Wide and _green_ , however. He draws Punnett squares in his head and watches her smirk.

"Lovely day, isn't it?" She glances around her, and he thinks there's most definitely amusement in those wide eyes. Then she giggles like the morning were some secret they shared, and he clears his throat.

"I suppose it is."

She's halfway through an enthusiastic nod when something catches her attention, and she turns to pick a voice out of the din of the market around them. "That'd be Mum."

She's waiting for him to say something, he thinks, looking up at him with those celery-stalk eyes. There's a pattern he's supposed to see, something he should be doing. His brain offers _déjà vu_ again, but that's not quite right. It's the prototype of familiarity, that's it—something he's not so much accustomed to since Gallifrey was lost, and his people with it. Come back from a trip or regeneration there and it was much the same as this: Knowing without knowledge. Structure without foundation. The hearts always saw before the mind.

A sigh returns him to the moment at hand, and he realizes the girl's grown impatient. Before he can raise his arms in defense, she crosses the space between them and throws her arms around his middle. But then her head is on his chest and he can feel her pulse through his shirt, and the preordained rightness freezes him.

"You really _can_ be a grumpy stick insect!"

He hears another voice in the words, this one quite certainly familiar, and is about to protest when she squeezes him lightly.

"But you're our grumpy stick insect."

Then she disentangles herself—he wonders what mind trick is to blame for his arms winding around her small shoulders—and straightens her sweater before smiling once more.

"I'll see you around, huh?"

She's bounding away before he can so much as blink, and he briefly considers following her. He's almost lost her in the crowd when she turns back. Her eyes are very big and her nose is doing that little up-turny thing, and she's mouthing something to him. Her mouth is smaller than—well, than he'd expect, given the rest of her, her uncanny resemblance to his companion; her lips are narrower, softer.

He squints to make out what she says, trying to reform it on his own lips— _that's_ where he knows the pucker, isn't it?—stopping abruptly once he realizes what she's saying. Lingering in the aching sweetness of it, he counts the years since he last heard the phrase, trying to find an appropriate unit of measurement: Decades, centuries, millennia.

 _Sa'ras agiapol. I love you._

* * *

He's lost her somewhere in the gardens. He knew she'd take to them immediately, pixie thing she is, that he'd have to keep a watchful eye on her—but this is unacceptable. They haven't been on the planet five minutes and already she's darted off. He grumbles, and her voice is in his head, admonishing him to try a little harder to put himself in other people's shoes. His companion is human, he reminds himself, and the gardens of Trykor are a marvel. She'd asked him in the TARDIS what their native name meant, massacring its pronunciation (not _quite_ as terribly as the rest of her silly species would've, he admits), and he'd told her it would be something like _Summerfall Park_. With the thousands of trees gaining and losing their leaves in ten-minute intervals, he reasons it's an accurate moniker.

He watches the forest grow into its green, the leaves wide and glossy, blocking most of the light from the planet's twin suns. A minute passes and the green turns gold, then red, and in a fantastic display, the leaves all drop from their branches simultaneously, crumbling to a dusty haze of particles before reaching the ground. He calls her name twice for good measure and circles the wide tree trunks.

"You think there's a message in all this? A take-home lesson?"

He knows this voice—like his companion's, though not quite the same. Completing his circuit around a trunk, he sees her leaning against its smooth bark. For all he's bad at telling this sort of thing, she's not quite so girlish, he thinks. Is she taller? Yes, perhaps an inch or two.

"You again." The words don't sound nearly as exasperated as he'd hoped.

"I like to think there is, that someone put a bit of truth here, once upon a time, for us to find."

Then she does that sad-smile thing he hates to see in his little schoolteacher, and the resemblance is all the more striking. He thinks he knows now—half-knows, at least, with the other half being a wild hope, that he's fitting the pieces together correctly, that there's really only one way this all could've worked out.

"And what's the message?" He crosses his arms, coming up to lean next to her against the tree. The leaves are at their midsummer fullest, green practically bursting from their veins.

She looks at him a moment before replying. "Maybe each set of leaves doesn't know another set came before it so quickly, or that another will come after it in just a minute. Maybe each leaf thinks it lives a long, full life. It's left to the ones who watch the trees to know it all just repeats, that the cycles can look so small to us, and still be so large to them." She turns to face him. "But it's both, isn't it? A lifetime is both, and we're leaves and gardeners at the same time."

She's reduced him to a blinking owlish figure again and he clears his throat. He thinks he might know what's behind her words, and the thought hurts—but then again, he hates operating on hunches. He wants figures, statistics, coordinates. He mentally reaches for census data about life expectancy before abandoning the idea; numbers will do him no good here.

"Maybe a couple leaves know their smallness," he offers. "Maybe a gardener takes to one and bends its branch and shows it all the other trees and leaves around it, all the color and life." He stops. There's a question there somewhere, and he wonders how best to reorganize the frustratingly-simple human words. "Do you think that's wrong? Should the gardener have left the leaf to itself and its tree?"

Then she smiles and slips her small hand in his. "No, I think the gardener would choose well, would know that some leaves are born looking outward, just waiting to see all the other trees. It doesn't change the leaf's lifespan, but maybe it…fills it."

He's tapping gently against her thumb with his, nodding to himself. It's a good answer, the hoped-for answer.

"But it's still a leaf," the girl finishes. "It will always, in the end, be a leaf. The gardener has to know that no matter how much he shows it and talks to it and—and cares for it…"

"It will still go gold, and red, and brown in time the gardener could measure in moments. That's the cost." He sighs, watching her brow furrow as she nods. "To know growth is to know withering."

She straightens against the tree, giving his hand a last squeeze before releasing it. "I think it's worth it, though. Isn't it?"

Then he hears another voice calling to him—this one, he's sure, belongs to his companion. He turns in its direction to answer, before glancing back to see the girl's spot empty. When he finds his partner, there's no way to hide his relief. For all his inability to see grey hairs and wrinkles and makeup, her heartbeat thrums strongly and the nimbus of her aura shines the brightest green. _She's still in summer_ , he thinks, wrapping his arms around her tiny form. There's time—never enough, too-quickly slipping—but there's time.

* * *

His companion insists on returning to Earth for the holidays. _Five years_! She exclaims, as though it settles everything, as though the interval were an abomination. He doesn't understand why; he always rather liked _five_. The five days in a usual Earth week she used to spend teaching her chattering students, the five books she always had on the coffee table of her apartment, the five tiny, smooth fingers on each of her tiny hands—hands which twine with his as they exit the TARDIS. Her cheek is on his shoulder when her father opens the door to let them in, and she introduces him as _her_ companion—cheeky thing.

The time passes not nearly as horribly as he'd imagined, though her stepmother is every bit as unpleasant as he'd been told and half-remembered. On the final evening of their visit, he decides he needs the smallest, tiniest break. _Just enough time to check up on things, make sure we're all ready to go tomorrow_ , he tells her, and her face is full of understanding and mercy as she smiles. The TARDIS is parked (most cleverly, he thinks) by a wayward hedge; he's nearly there when he hears the soft crunch of footfalls on the snow behind him.

"Clara, I told you I'll be—"

He turns, realizing it's not his companion who's followed him. The girl looks much the same as before, though he thinks maybe her hair is a little longer, the green of her irises just a shade darker. He's really no good at noticing these sorts of things. She waves a bare hand at him.

"Hello again! Happy Christmas!"

"Christmas was two days ago."

"Oh." She looks put out for a second before shrugging. "Well, I'm getting better—I was close, at least. Happy Almost-Christmas!"

This time he refuses to be stunned into silence. "What are you doing here?"

"Just wanted to see it, is all."

"See what?" There's something in her voice he can't place, some undercurrent he still can't—won't—put a name to.

"Her old house." The words leave her softly, as though she hopes not to break them. He watches her gaze dart over to the Oswald home, its lights on, faint music leaking from its windows and doorways. When she looks back at him, he knows her eyes must have some of his companion's magic about them, to grow so large in so short a time.

"Is she in there?" The girl points toward the house, and he nods, a wordless part of him at last understanding all of this, willing the rest of him catch on as well.

"Would you…like to see her?"

She shakes her head. "There might be consequences or what-have-you. Wouldn't want those."

Suddenly it seems everything about her is quivering, from the saucers of her eyes to the mouth they somehow, impossibly, share. She sniffs and rubs away the first tears with her sleeve, and his hearts are twisting for her, forcing him to take another step, and another, until he's standing before her. It's all he can do on his own, and all the encouragement she needs. Leaning forward, she pulls him into an embrace not so unlike their last, on Arwald 27-G. This time his arms are quicker to wrap around her, and she clutches at the fabric of his jacket. When she speaks, he both hears and feels it; her lips are over his hearts, and she's murmuring in his native tongue.

 _Muin leipeis. Muin leipeis tasapoly, Bapa. I miss her. I miss her so much, Papa._

Her heartbeat is fast—doubly fast for a human, he thinks absently—against his chest. They are outside of time, now, the two of them. It's no longer Christmastime, no longer England, no longer Earth. She's sobbing, his darling girl, dearer than all the worlds, and all he can do is press his lips to her forehead, telling her without sound he knows, he knows; it's yet to come for him but he knows, he can feel it creeping. Premonition is no crystal-bearing charlatan, not to their kind.

 _Ponaei, ponaei—Potesa stamatisia na pligonei? It hurts, oh, it hurts—When will it ever stop hurting?_

He doesn't know how to tell her it won't, that the hurt becomes an ache, and the ache lingers in nebulae the color of her eyes, that all too soon he won't be able to pass a school on any planet without looking for her, hands on her hips, mis-explaining Jane Austen.

So he settles for brushing his mind against hers, trying to think through the tenderness settling over them, his hearts, her birdlike shoulders. He holds his daughter and tells her the most comforting thing he can think of, unfettered by his usual rough, halting mumbles:

 _One day, heartsholder, her smile will bring more warmth than pain. One day you will see how much you have become her, better than us both, with all her best parts. One day we will return to this house, together, and you will hear her in the kitchen, see her reading in her room, and we will catch her light in little ways, little places, like the tracks of stars_.

The last of the day's sun is going blue when they part. He wipes her cheeks and catches glimpses of scraped knees and bruised hearts to come. There's a familiar whirring from the hedge; he realizes there's more than one TARDIS hiding in the leaves, and smiles.

"Thank you," she manages on a trembling breath.

"Come now, none of that. _You_ need to practice your triangulation. Christmas _ish_ is not Christmas Day."

"Yes, sir." She chuckles and turns toward her TARDIS.

She's only taken a step before she stops, looking back at him a moment before darting across the snow. Standing on her tiptoes, she brushes a kiss over his cheek.

 _Sa'ras agiapol, Bapa_.

 _Kai sa'ras agiapole, asteri mur_.

He waits for her TARDIS' sound to fade before stepping back toward the house. Of all the additional senses his kind possess, he is sure at least one is wholly devoted to his companion; through it, he can tell she's now sleeping, that her current dream is a good one, that her body is changing and growing in ways no less miraculous than her expanding eyes. The old music winds down the hill, and he walks back across the snow to its beat.


End file.
